Best Bird of the Weekend (Third of January 2011)

Some weekends are just bad for birds. In three of four NFL playoff games, birds named for birds played and lost. That’s right… teams with bird names went 0 for 3. Adding ornithological insult to injury, I went out to find Bohemian Waxwings in the snow and couldn’t even find Cedar Waxwings! The only birds I spied in the midst of an unrelenting snowfall were large, presumably ravenous flocks of American Robins. Even Corey’s weekend was less spectacular than usual in terms of avian observation; his best bird of the weekend was a Golden-crowned Kinglet coming to his parents’ suet.

What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.

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Pretty boring here in Michigan as well. My best bird was a red-breasted nuthatch that was highly irritated at me for shoveling the driveway while he was trying to sample the suet. He kept turning around and looking at me from just a few feet away and giving me the typical nuthatch “eennnhh” but with a hint of malice. No gratitude at all.

My best bird of the weekend was a light morph Rough-legged Hawk in Pennsylvania. It was an amazing looking bird. I have some photos of it at http://wordsaboutbirds.blogspot.com . I also had a nice flock of Snow Buntings in the same area!

Enjoying a flock of Bohemian Waxwings feasting on the frozen fruit of the Chinese crab apple tree 20 feet from my kitchen window on a snowy day in Chisholm Minnesota! It’s wonderful. My cat is quite interested too but for obvious other reasons (He’s an indoor cat, not to worry) They are quite beautiful.

It rained most of the time while guiding in the sarapiqui area of Costa Rica but we stil managed to get glimpses of Black-crested Coquette, and fantastic studies of Sunbittern and Fasciated Tiger-Heron.

My best bird for this past week, has got to be the juvenile Red-tailed Hawk. I was at the retention pond by Everbank Stadium (Jags) and was moving closer to a group of Turkey Vultures for a better photo, when from the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the RTH sitting in the tree about eye level. I stopped dead in my tracks as to not further startle it, and it seemed at that moment, the vultures took off and the RTH popped down onto the ground and started eating the fish. Not sure what bird actually caught it, but I understood why the vultures were there. Although RTH are common, this was a wonderful up close and personal experience.

The RTH didn’t seem bothered by my presence at all, and allowed me to slowly move to within about 3 feet of it. I got several photos and 2 quick videos until my memory card filled.

Crossbill doubleheader (White-winged and Red) on the North Shore, New Jersey. For some reason, these birds have chosen to hang out in the Japanese Black Pines in this area, to the delight of Jersey and some NY birders.

My birding was pretty lackluster this weekend, but I did find (and nearly collided with) a pretty great bird when I wasn’t birding. Last night as I was driving home from a meeting a barred owl suddenly flushed up out of a ditch as I was driving by. Fortunately, neither of us was injured.